A new international consortium has been set up to figure out what Earthlings could do if an asteroid came hurtling towards the planet on a path of imminent destruction.
The project will look at three methods of averting disaster: the Hollywood-sanctioned solutions of sending up a crack team of deep drillers with a nuclear bomb …

Sorry mate, I read the PDF

If all the NEOs are bus sized, there's no worry

and it's a complete waste of money.* Anything that small will pretty much burn up on entry into the Earth's atmosphere, assuming it doesn't bounce off because it came in at the wrong angle. It's only the ones that would require a nuke that you need to worry about.

*Although I suppose from the politician's point of view that makes it even better, because nothing bad happens from failure, and when if the project keeps failing, you can keep asking for more money. ... Maybe that's why they included the Star Trek style tractor beam too.

"I thought you were spot on until I went back to browse the PDF"

Don't know what you read but the report(PDF) calls it a 'gravity tractor' approach. That does NOT mean tractor beam (scifi) it just means flying near it and slowly adjusting it's trajectory by using the tiny gravitational attraction between it and the 'tractor' to provide the virtual 'grappling iron' . As the report suggests this approach will need years to have an effect.

"Oh, I've heard of worse," said Ford, "I read of one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole. Killed ten billion people."

Thanks Chris. I nearly put in the black hole reference too, but decided against it as some pedantic twat would probably have missed the joke and mentioned that there are no black holes in sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.

Fail (on my part)

I misread the opening line "A new international consortium" and thought it said "A News International consortium". WHAT? Rupert Murdoch wants to save the world from Asteroid Armageddon (tm)? God help us all....

Time's also needed.

A thruster approach is the preferred approach to a NEO confirmed to be on collision course with a number of years notice (probably about five or so). Not only would it take time for the thruster kit to intercept the NEO, it would also need enough time for the slow, gentle push approach to have the desired effect.

The solutions being proposed here are probably for near-emergency situations (say, a doomsday comet gets confirmed with only a year's notice or less--think the 2012 predictions).

PS. To El Reg, the proper term (in the Trek universe) for a force beam intended to push something away from you is a REPULSOR beam. At least one other universe I've read has used the term "pressor beam" for the same thing, but the idea is you don't want to attract the object but repel it away.

Not that I have read the report of course :-)

But I suspect that they are talking about parking a massive object (ie one that has sufficient mass to do the job) near to the NEO and let the gravitational attraction between the two objects pull the NEO away - or towards the sun I suppose, as long as it's going to miss our blue marble.

@John Smith 19

It does sound fanciful doesn't it ?. Nevertheless that is exactly what is being proposed in the document referenced in the article under the title "Gravity Tractor"

"..minimize fuel consumption and maximize the asteroid’s deflection? What are the trade-offs between the mass of the tractor, the distance between the tractor and the NEO, the control laws, and the time required to produce the required deflection? Reliability is a crucial issue given the long periods (several years to a decade) typically required for gravity traction to produce the required deflection. What are the requirements for autonomous spacecraft control procedures to manage hovering station keeping and maintain stability of the traction system over a long period of time in the (verynearby) presence of an irregular rotating mass?"

Yes, except in the Trek episode referenced

the Enterprise was using a tractor beam in an attempt to pull the asteroid out of the path of the planet. But it failed to suitably change the course of the object and they need the deus-ex-machina repulsor beam on the planet to save the day. Never understood why they didn't use the photon torpedoes myself. Split it up into little bits, move the dangerous chunks out of the way, and don't worry about the rest.

Okay, now that you've said what they are proposing,

Missle Command

"The first problem here will be to stop everyone freaking out when someone fires off a nuke by making sure nuclear response is internationally coordinated."

I would imagine it's quite easy to distinguish between a missile aimed at Moscow/Washington and a rocket equipped to reach escape velocity and enter, at the very least, Earth orbit, before a second stage takes it into outer space.

We are not talking about shooting down an asteroid as it enters the atmosphere over the Pacific. By that point it's game over, far too late,

Sean Connery called...

@Gav

Eventually it is, but not shortly after its being launched. Because in the first stages the rocket will go up, no matter where its destination lies. If the target is on earth it will eventually change its course and fly in the right direction.

However; most countries would already be on full alert even before the rocket has changed its course. Because the quicker you can intercept such a missile the better. And that's not even mentioning retaliation.

Good point, imagine the royalties that the MPAA will demand

Nuke first, apologise later

I would think that its vital that they hang around to see where the target is. It's hardly a trivial detail

Otherwise the day Pakistan nukes India, the US will nuke Pakistan, on the assumption it was for them, at which point Russia will nuke the US, on the same basis, and China will nuke Russia, who'll be nuked by Britain, who'll be nuked by France, who'll be nuked by North Korea, who'll be nuked by South Korea, just on reflex.

Kind of like a western bar fight where no-one cares whose swinging at who, everyone just joins in.

The initial launch paths are actually likely to be

quite similar. They'd be launched from the same facilities and are space vehicles not merely rockets flying through the atmosphere. I'm not sure how much extra boos they'd need to break orbit. Initially I was thinking you'd need something Saturn V like, but the exploration satellites don't need launchers like that, so nukes wouldn't either.

On the other hand, if you are talking about a year or more before impact with Earth, there's plenty of time to arrange the nuke launch and clear it with everyone.

Well, that kind of is the whole idea behind

Couldn't we just let it hit?

Well...

..if the EU is funding the research I expect them to "negotiate the hurtling object" into a new trajectory at a meeting hosted in Strasbourg.. after all, the EU firmly believes bureaucracy can sort anything out.....

@Gav

I think it's simpler than that, you know. Getting something to an asteroid by definition needs something that can get out of the gravity well, which again by definition means a much bigger rocket than anything in the nuke arsenal. (As you say, if it gets close enough that a regular ICBM could hit it, then we're screwed.) So the easy way to tell if it's a nuke destined for an asteroid is bcos it's sat on top of a sodding great multistage rocket at Baikonur...